Female wrestlers claim championships, eye trip to Olympics

Adeline Gray remembers the days when female wrestlers would don panty hose or swim caps on their heads to protect their hair. She remembers wearing swimsuits.

“The more colorful the better,” she said.

Those days are long gone. Female wrestlers, like the ones who competed in the ASICS USA Wrestling Junior Nationals championships Monday at the Fargodome, were dressed just like the boys – and improving upon some already-impressive resumes.

With a quick pin in the 165-pound finals, Gray claimed her third junior national championship about an hour after she was named USA Wrestling’s female wrestler of the year. The Denver wrestler is also a Senior World Team Trials champion and a Senior Nationals champion this year.

In the next three months, she will be competing at the Junior World tournament in Turkey and the Senior World tournament in Denmark before reporting to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“Plus, school will be starting,” Gray said of her first year as a college student at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.

“She’s amazing,” said Gary Abbott of USA Wrestling, who has helped oversee female wrestling since it was introduced to this tournament five years ago.

Like most female wrestlers, Gray grew up wrestling against the boys. Her father, George, who came from a family of seven boys, was a wrestler. George and his wife, Donna, saw two of their four daughters wrestle at this tournament.

“I was 6 years old when I started and fell in love with it,” Gray said.

Competing on the Bear Creek High School boys varsity team in Colorado, Gray produced a 62-37 record – competing in the 125-, 130- and 140-pound weight classes her freshman, sophomore and junior years. She finished high school in Marquette, Mich., so she could work on her wrestling skills at an Olympic Training Center.

Now invited to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Gray is going back home.

“It’s awesome …. that was the plan from the beginning,” Gray said. “Wrestling for girls has really evolved. Now I can see where it takes me.”

For Gray and C.C. Weber of Michigan, they are hoping wrestling takes them to the gold medal stand of the Olympics. With only three states (Hawaii, Texas and Washington) offering high school wrestling for females and only 15 colleges – mostly NAIA schools – offering the sport, the Olympics seems to be the logical path for standouts like Gray and Weber.

“Olympic champion, that’s the goal,” said Weber, a Goodrich, Mich., 109-pounder who won her third junior national championship Monday. “I want the gold. I want everything. I’m greedy.”

At last season’s Michigan boys state tournament, Weber placed fourth and finished with a 53-9 record. She was a three-time state qualifier competing against the boys.

“I wasn’t very happy I didn’t get first place, but considering everything, I guess it was a good accomplishment,” said Weber, who like Gray, will be competing at the World Junior tournament in Turkey and train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“I’ve been wrestling against guys forever … in fact, I’ve probably wrestled more guys than girls during my career,” said Gray, whose brother was a four-time state champion who now wrestles at the University of Michigan.

Brieanna Delgado of South Carolina, who won a 124 Junior National title Monday, said wrestling against boys was like having brothers. Delgado’s older sister Brittany, a two-time Junior National champion, is now wrestling at Oklahoma City University.

“I was 4 years old when I got into and wrestled on a team with boys,” Delgado said. “It’s like having a big group of big brothers who were always overprotective. It was kind of nice.”

So is the way female wrestling has evolved.

“The quality jumps every year,” Abbott said of the female field at the USA Wrestling tournament. “The girls are getting tougher and tougher every year. We hope to continue to get more people involved because it is a tough international field.”